Sharad Pawar Assembly poll rout raises question of existence for patriarch’s political legacy

Sharad Pawar had led the NCP faction to an emphatic win in the Lok Sabha elections in Maharashtra; however, five months later the 83-year-old suffered one of the worst setbacks in his five-decade-long political career on Saturday.

The rout of Sharad Pawar-led faction has raised questions over his political future with a potential risk of a further slide in the party flock in future.

Deputy CM Ajit Pawar, who led a split in the NCP in July 2023, has emerged as the “true inheritor” of his uncle’s political legacy, with trends and results of the Maharashtra polls indicating landslide victory for the BJP-led Mahayuti, of which the NCP is part.

The latest trends and results showed Ajit Pawar-led NCP winning 19 constituencies and leading in 22 segments as counting of votes is under way.

In contrast, the Sharad Pawar-led NCP (SP) won just four seats and leading in six others.

The Ajit-led NCP had contested 59 seats and the NCP (SP) 86 out of the 288 constituencies.

The Maha Vikas Aghadi of the Shiv Sena (UBT), Congress, and NCP (SP) is blown away in the saffron storm led by the BJP-led Mahayuti.

The fact that Sharad Pawar was the chief architect of the MVA, which won 30 of the 48 Lok Sabha seats in Maharashtra and had led the state government earlier, is definitely going to hurt.

The defeat is specifically personal for Sharad Pawar as his grandnephew Yugendra Pawar is trailing by 99,000 votes from home turf Baramati against Ajit Pawar, the sitting MLA.

Five months back, Sharad Pawar’s daughter and Baramati MP Supriya Sule had comfortably overcome the challenge posed by Ajit’s wife Sunetra in the Lok Sabha poll and retained the seat.

In his 57-year-long political career, Sharad Pawar has represented Baramati in the Assembly as well as in the Lok Sabha, and currently, he is a member of the Rajya Sabha. Before the Assembly elections, he had indicated that he would bid farewell to his parliamentary career after his current term ends next year.

The NCP (SP)’s poor performance in the Assembly polls stands in contrast to the Lok Sabha elections when it had won eight out of 10 seats contested.

Sharad Pawar had not been complacent following the Lok Sabha elections. He toured the state extensively and inducted BJP leaders, including Samarjit Ghatge and Harshvardhan Patil.

In 2019, after many NCP bigwigs joined the BJP, Pawar managed to win 54 Assembly seats. His campaign speech in heavy rain in Satara made waves and became a lasting image from that election.

The latest Assembly elections followed a split in the party in 2023, with nephew Ajit Pawar walking away to join the ruling BJP-Shiv Sena coalition. It seems the senior Pawar’s appeal to voters to defeat “all the traitors” by decisive margins did not elicit much response.

After the split, Ajit Pawar and senior NCP leader Praful Patel claimed that they committed no treachery as Sharad Pawar himself had wanted to join the BJP-led alliance but backed out at the last moment.

Sharad Pawar never gave any categorical reply to the allegation. But he remained resolute after Ajit Pawar’s rebellion. When asked who would be the promising face of his party, Pawar raised his hand and replied, “Sharad Pawar”.

Notably, he was one of the first Opposition leaders to seek unity of all Opposition parties to take on the BJP juggernaut led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.

With the INDIA bloc succeeding in cutting down the BJP’s tally in the Lok Sabha, it was expected that Pawar would be able to replicate the results and even dislodge the BJP from power in Maharashtra.

Sharad Pawar was mentored by Yashwantrao Chavan, the first Chief Minister of Maharashtra, and was elected MLA from Baramati in 1967 when he was 27 years old.

In 1978, he became Chief Minister of the state after toppling the Congress-led government and forming an alliance with the Janata Party. His government did not last long and he returned to the Congress in 1986.

He served as Chief Minister four times and twice as Union Minister, holding key portfolios such as Defence and Agriculture.

As a Chief Minister, Pawar is credited for rolling out the state’s first women’s policy in 1994 which gave women equal inheritance rights.

He founded the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) in 1999 after parting ways with the Congress over Sonia Gandhi’s foreign origins.

But after the Assembly elections the same year, the NCP and the Congress came together to form a government and Pawar faced allegations of doing a flip-flop.

The Congress-NCP combine ruled the state for 15 years till it was ousted by the BJP in 2014.